When I was doing research for this list, a strange feeling overcame me. While watching these virtual deaths take place, it dawned on me what that feeling was. In video games, we spend all of our time doing our absolute best not to get killed. We run away from the chainsaw killer, we dodge the booby traps in the mine, and we avoid the monsters. We do our absolute best not to see the death scenes in a video game.

I didn't realize how much of a shame that is until I started creating this list. Some of these killings are brutal and gory, but all of them are created with a sense of fantastic realism that goes underappreciated. There's something cathartic about letting a character die simply for the fact of wanting to see the actual death take place. Let's take this journey together down the path of some of the gnarliest video game deaths.